[EM] In political elections C (in terms of serious candidates w. an a priori strong chance of election) will never get large!

[David L Wetzell]

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:36 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km_elmet at lavabit.com> wrote:

> On 05/27/2013 09:19 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
>
>> Smith's http://rangevoting.org/**PuzzIgnoredInfo.html<http://rangevoting.org/PuzzIgnoredInfo.html>
>>
>> needs to be taken w. a grain of salt.
>>
>> The short-comings of IRV depend on the likely number of serious
>> candidates whose a priori odds of winning, before one assigns
>> voter-utilities, are strong.  If real life important single-winner
>> political elections have economies of scale in running a serious
>> election then it's reasonable to expect only 1, 2 or 3 (maybe 4 once in
>> a blue moon) candidates to have a priori, no matter what election rule
>> gets used, serious chance to win, while the others are at best trying to
>> move the center on their key issues and at worse potential spoilers in a
>> fptp election.
>>
>
> That argument is too strong in the sense that it can easily be modified to
> lead to any conclusion you might wish. And it can be modified thus because
> it is too vague.
>

Hi Karl, good to hear from you again.  I doubt economies of scale args are
completely flexible and the evidence need not be as rigorously presented
when one is initially communicating ideas.

>
> Let me be more precise. You may claim that if there're some economies of
> scale, then it's reasonable to only expect 1, 2 or 3 viable candidates. But
> here's a problem. Without any data, you can posit that the economies of
> scale kick in at just the right point to make 2.5-party rule inevitable
> even under Condorcet, say. But without any data, I could just as well posit
> that the economies of scale, if any, kick in at n = 1000; or, I could claim
> that the economies of scale kick in at n = 2 and thus we don't need
> anything more than Plurality in the first place[1].
>

No, because non-competitive candidates still serve a useful purpose even if
their odds of winning are low.  And a non-plurality election is harder to
game, as illustrated by the GOP's 40-yr use of a nixonian- Southern
Strategy of pitting poor whites against minorities when outsiders are given
voice to reframe wedge issues that tilt the de facto center away from the
true political center.


> So one may claim that "important single-winner political elections"
> necessarily have economies to scale that make anything beyond 2.5-party
> rule exceedingly unlikely. But without data, that's claim isn't worth
> anything. And without data that can't be explained as confusing
> P(multipartyism) with P(multipartyism | political dynamics given by
> Plurality), the simpler hypothesis, namely that there is no such barrier
> that we know of, holds by default.
>

How about economics?  There exists X a cost of running a competitive
campaign.  There exists Y a reward, not per se all economic, for winning a
campaign.  There exists P a probability of winning.  P is roughly inversely
proportional to the number of competitive candidates, albeit less for the
last candidate to decide to compete.  If there exists N likely competitive
candidates then if the calculation is k*Y/(N+1)<X holds, w. k<1, for the
N+1 candidate, who then chooses not to run, it implies that N>(kY-X)/X.   A
better election rule might increase k some, but arguably X will also tend
to be higher for the less well-known candidate, regardless of the election
rule used.

So I agree that the average number of competittive candidates can be
increased by the use of a different single-winner election rule, but with
limits due to the other aspects of running an election and how a
single-winner election tends to discourage too many from putting a lot into
running for the office.


> And, if you're not claiming that there is such economics of scale, but
> simply that there *might* be, then it's still less risky to assume
> multipartyism is right and use an advanced method. If we're wrong, nothing
> lost but "momentum". If we're right, we avoid getting stuck at something
> that would still seriously misrepresent the wishes of the people.
>

 Well, I am claiming there exists inherent economies of scale in
single-winner elections such that the number of competitive candidates are
likely to have a fuzzy ceiling apart from the specific election rule used,
and that single-partyism/multipartyism is a function of the mix of
single-winner and fair multi-winner election rules used.  My implication of
the first is that it relativizes the import of alternative single-winner
election rules for political elections and thereby elevates the import of
marketing/first-mover advantage in the replacement of FPTP.

>
> (I'd claim, based on (among other things) international data under Runoff,
> that there's little evidence that multipartyism is inherently incompatible
> with single-winner rules in general. But such data can easily be specially
> pled away by making the rules about what counts circuitous enough. So if
> I'm going to go in that direction, I'd like to have some idea of, before
> the fact, what kind of evidence will convince and what will not.)
>

It wd also involve stuff like a parliamentarian vs presidential system.  In
a presidential system, particularly w. a stronger president, the
presidential elections tend to build up the two biggest parties at the
expense of smaller parties.  But such a system could also lead to one-party
domination with no clear competitor/replacement for the dominant party so
that the system wd seem to be a multi-party system.   In the US, we are
heading towards a one-party dominated system and the GOP civil war shows
how the alliances they have relied on are becoming dysfunctional for key
nat'l elections.

>
> [1] Possibly with stricter rules to entry so that insignificant third
> parties don't spoil the elections. Adding such rules, e.g. requiring more
> signatures for candidates to run, would be a lot simpler and less expensive
> to implement than switching to IRV.
>

Once more, small third parties can serve a function even if they are not
likely to get their candidaate elected.
If one adds to their activism a commitment to MLK-jr/Gandhi-like activism
apart from elections proper then there is the capacity to move the center.
 Having their candidate get more respect and air-time during the election
is icing on the pre-existing non-political/cultural tools available to them.
dlw
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